WikiLeaks has incredibly precise timing.
Or, “Explaining the recent DNC leaks to non-Americans.”
Early on, Bernie Sanders was mocked as a “rock star politician”. That is, a politician that, like the stereotypical rock star, talks bigger and better than the common person, but dies out fairly quickly. From a certain limelight, Sanders did fit the bill: at the time of his entrance into the Democratic Party in late 2015, he was a stereotypical, old white guy in competition with a cast of characters, was primarily known for complaining about really stereotypical things like “the 1%” and “Wall Street”, and having goofy hair. So, how can a grandpa with ridiculous-looking hair even compete?
Well, the Democratic Party put the rock star on the metaphorical stage that is the live Democratic debates, and suddenly almost every young liberal voter (that is, those under 30) was going for Sanders, instead of Hillary Clinton, the intended nominee of the DNC.
With Hillary Clinton being the person with the email scandal and egregious history as Secretary of State, Trump as the big bad businessman/celebrity with a popular American reality TV show/“demagogue”, and this election quickly becoming one of the most divisive ever (okay, Americans have heard of latter one and the TV show thing before), the ones down the middle wanted a third party. Unfortunately, Independents were not going to be able to fill that void quickly come general election (as it almost always has been), so having Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Senator and then-Independent, do so and change to a Democrat, was nothing short of a godsend. This, however, eventually turned into a time when it was absolutely no secret that the Democratic Party in general was actively trying to undermine Sanders’ campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton, with Sanders repeatedly pointing to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then-Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (the governing body of the Democratic Party, usually referred by the acronym “DNC”) and well-known crazy, as the source for these allegations. Later finding out the reality of the situation, on the other hand, has hit very hard for Sanders supporters (and former ones like myself; as a disclaimer, I have not supported any of the current candidates recently, and decided to not vote in this election at all), and even those outside of the Democratic party, when faced with proof.
This is one of many emails released by WikiLeaks, but it was the first major bombshell for many Americans. Both in and out of his campaign, Sanders has repeatedly mentioned that he was Jewish and denied claims of his false faith to the dismay of many following these events. To add to this, Sanders does not like talking about his Jewish beliefs or heritage very often or openly, which was stacked with one constant rumor that he was actually faking his beliefs, regardless of how rare Judaism is still in the US. With the internal emails from the DNC planning to having him outed as an atheist, if they executed it, it would have generated a negative public bias. In the worst case scenario, a train wreck for not just these two states in the South for Sanders, since the South generally vote for candidates based on their religious beliefs, but enough to mean one less person to worry about for practically the rest of the presidential election, which would have been a solid win for many Hillary Clinton supporters. Since this email within the DNC and by extension the Democratic Party is clearly in favor of only one candidate, the Democratic Party failed to do the only thing it was really made for: support all of its candidates for Presidential nomination equally.
WikiLeaks releasing nearly 20,000 other emails just a few days before the Democratic Convention and after the Republican Convention single-handedly denied the Democratic Party the one thing they really needed:
party unity.
If the convention proceeded without WikiLeaks releasing the emails, then, ideally speaking, the convention would have gone off with very moot points. Protests would have been fairly minimal and comparable to the Republican Convention the week before, when there were only a few hundred or so (which is not surprising), and any blame would have been pushed to conspiracy theorists and the so-called misogynists by the mainstream media for not being for Hillary Clinton. Not only that, the majority of Sanders supporters who already knew that this time was coming anyway would have begrudgingly accepted Hillary Clinton as the nominee right then and there at her acceptance speech. Simply put, a by-the-numbers progressive party, in both senses of the latter word, and every Democrat would all be happy together, mostly.
Now, since WikiLeaks, one of the most trusted organizations in the world, released and have undeniable confirmation of the “rigged” system repeatedly mentioned by Sanders, the above-mentioned by-the-numbers situation is moot instead. Sanders supporters, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike are simply angry to no end. To show that, they booed Sanders out for supporting Clinton and held protests that were at least in the thousand or so, both before the start of the convention, and the people who sat through the roll call at the convention simply walked out before Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech for Democratic Party Nominee, an almost unheard-of move today, especially when the first female nominee for President of the United States is happening. The person at the helm and very often accused by Sanders, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned in reaction to the leaks (and apparently the DNC scrambled to replace with an even bigger Clinton supporter, if that’s even possible). Americans, especially Democrats and the common liberal/swing voter, are now being blasted every which way for unifying together to defeat the common enemy, when the entire Democratic Party is now very fragile and running on its last legs to get decent support.
